Hershey’s is following in their footsteps from last year and are releasing new flavors of Kisses for the fall. The big newbie last year were the Candy Corn Kisses, which were an exclusive limited edition release for Target. For those of you who were fans of those Kisses will be happy to know they’re back with a wider release this year and brought new friends with them this time: Caramel Apple Kisses and Pumpkin Spice Kisses.

I searched high and low for these new flavors, and unfortunately have had success in finding the former. The hunt for the Pumpkin Spice continues, I will not rest until I find them.

The Caramel Apple Kisses are beautiful to observe. The packaging is attractive with nice rich festive colors and nice illustrations. The Kisses are wrapped in even more eye-catching fall-colored wrappers with brilliant red and orange stripes. I look at these and am immediately reminded as to why I love fall so much.

Opening the bag with great anticipation, the kisses smell perfectly normal: sweet and chocolatey.

I took one of the Kisses to cut one in half for a photo. This proved dangerous as the center wanted to ooze everywhere. The caramel center is almost liquid, I was very surprised by. I don’t recall the regular Caramel Kisses being so flowing.

The flavor is first the sweet Hershey’s chocolate along with the creamy caramel flavors with nice burnt sugar notes. After that is when the apple taste comes in. It’s very artificial with a floral essence and strong juicy notes that have a slight tang to it. It reminds me of what candied apples taste like in a way: fruity, but something is a little off from the coating. They really remind me of those radioactive green Caramel Apple Pops that Charms makes. Despite the flavor oddness from the apple, the Kisses work somehow for me. They taste like fall.

As a side note, not everyone I shared these with agreed with me. As I fed some to one of my sisters and she scrunched her nose up at them.

Reese’s Pieces are a candy that took me a long time to learn to appreciate, as strange as that may sound. As a child I’d watch my parents and sister enjoy them and I could never bring myself to like them. The obviously lack of chocolate made Reese’s Pieces unappealing in my mind. To add to this, the odd color scheme of the candies (brown, orange and yellow) reminded me too much of the nasty 1970’s styled furniture that was prevalent in my house. It made me feel ill to just look at them.

As I got older I did give Reese’s Pieces several chances to redeem themselves, but they never became something I’d specifically crave. Still, they’re such a popular candy still, I figured it’d be good fodder for the blog.

I found a packet to try just in time to catch the special promo packaging for the new Batman “Dark Knight” film. The only difference is that the standard orange/yellow/brown colors have been replaced with black and blue. Very odd I must say, yet I like it better than the normal colors. Don’t ask why, I can’t logically explain it. The shape of the pieces are a little smaller than a plain M&M and a little flatter.

The flavor is very, very peanut buttery. You get the light sweet hit from the candy shell, then almost immediatly after you get the flavor of the iconic Reese’s smooth peanut butter. The texture is different from the cups we all know and love, as the pieces’ center is very creamy and buttery as opposed to dry and crumbly. The pieces have a very satisfying sweet/salty balance that is hard to beat.

I have to admit these aren’t as offensive as I remember as a kid and I quickly polished off my packet. Just goes to show your tastes always change.

The first thing that ran though my mind when I saw this bar was: what’s a tiffin? It sounds like something belonging to Little Miss Muffet sitting on her tuffet. Still, the silly name tickled me and the bar was secured a place in my shopping cart. After doing a little research, I found that this seems to be a very sought after and hard to find Cadbury bar. It’s from Northern Ireland and is similar to the standard Cadbury Fruit and Nut, except the nuts are taken out and replaced with biscuit pieces. So raisins+cookie shortbread=the Cadbury Tiffin.

The bar itself is small but hefty and is sectioned into six squares per 50 gram bar. It has vegetable fat in the chocolate itself, so it’s a cheapened chocolate. The smell of the chocolate bar is overpowerfing of the dry dairy milk powder. The color of the chocolate is a pretty, light milky brown.

My first bite and I immediately got a raisin which was wonderfully sweet, rich and chewy. The chocolate tasted different to me from the Cadbury Dairymilks I’ve had in the past. This was overwhelmingly flavored with the milk powder, so much so tha the bar almost tasted sour to me. After the dairy hit you get the burning sweetness of the sugar, but I really get no “chocolate” flavor from it at all. Instead I get a smooth mouth feel, which is probably more from the vegetable fat than the cocoa butter. The second bite I finally got bits of the cookies, which are very small bits of shortbread. They do provide a bit of texture but no flavor.

Overall, a nice bar for a good “candy” hit, but if I’m craving chocolate, I’ll get something else.

This is latest and greatest in the Snickers bar limited edition line. The wrapper describes it as: “Almonds, caramel and marshmallow-flavored nougat wrapped in dark chocolate”. Oh, wow! Is it just me, or does that sound simply amazing? Pinch me please, I surely must have gone to heaven.

Once unwrapped, the bar looks like a normal Snickers except for the darker brown color. It smells of the deep dark chocolate and a bit of a roasted flavor, I think from the almonds. It’s also smells very sweet with a milky vanilla essence. I cut the bar it in half to see the cross section. The marshmallow nougat is a pale white like snow, with the layer of almonds and caramel

The first bite is awesome. It’s thick, chewy and substantial and oh so tasty! You get a nice nuttiness from the almonds, a good sweetness from the caramel and a nice chocolate hit from the coating. The marshmallow nougat doesn’t deliver much in flavor but the texture is so nice. It’s a little thicker and stickier than the standard Snickers nougat, but it makes the chew so much more fulfilling. It’s really, really good. It’s a really stellar bar, and I like it way more than the original.

I’m hoarding these. Mars better make these a regular addition to the Snickers family.

When I think of certain foreign countries, very specific candy come to mind. I think of Smarties and Mars bars for the United Kingdom, Michel Cluizel chocolate for France, Haribo Gummis for Germany, and Pocky for Japan. My point to all this is that the candy that comes to mind for Australia is Cherry Ripe.

I eyed Cherry Ripe for a long, long time. As silly as it may sound, the whole reason it interested me to begin with was its intensely bright red package. Once I read the description of the bar: “ripe juicy cherries and moist coconut smothered in rich ‘Old Gold’ Dark Chocolate” I was sold on the idea of it. It was a matter of time before I got my hands on it.

My patience was eventually rewarded and I tore open the wrapper with an intense purpose. I really didn’t know what to expect on the inside of the bar from the description. Was it coconut studded with maraschino cherries like a fruity version of Almond Joy? Were they mixed in and evenly dispersed throughout? Just a flavor? I couldn’t wait.

The bar looks like a standard enrobed candy bar on the outside, smooth and dark and smelling very coconutty and sweet. Breaking the bar in half revealed the moment of truth: the interior was an intensely bright red coconut center. No cherry bits to be seen.

As for the flavor? Well, take a Mounds bar and flavor the coconut center with maraschino cherry syrup and a little Red 40 and you got yourself a Cherry Ripe. Sweet, slight medicinal cherry flavor with a hint of bitterness. The coconut really saved it with its sweet, nutty and extremely moist texture. The combination works, but comes off as a little odd to me.

I’m happy I tried this so I could put my mind and taste buds to rest. It’s not really my thing, to be honest, but I certainly will give it another go if I find myself in the land down under.